I don't want to move to the Gulf, mind you, but I am curious about what it's like to live there on a day to day basis.
Well, it's not exactly a lecture, but here's my attempt at a reply.
My initial assumptions on gulf living was that gulf nations were desperate for western academics and would pay extremely high salaries to attract them. That plus the free-housing an tax-free bennies made for a lucrative life indeed. I get the impression now, however, that pay scales are not so lucrative.
This, of course, is the dominant stereotype of ME jobs. It's a place you go to flesh out your bank account. In Saudi you always seem to hear the story if the expat who had his digitsl watch adjusted so it ticked of money earned instead of time. People talked casually at parties about "putting away $100,000 in 5 years and then going home." And it can be -- for some people in certain circumstances. For most people this remained a fantasy. The only people I knew who were saving that kind of money were either dual carreer couples who could effectively put one whole salary in the bank each month or those odd (usually single) types who essentially sold X years of their lives for X amount of dollars. They spent nothing, did nothing. And they hated the Gulf. My family and I lived a rather full life in the Gulf and so didn't walk away with a huge pile of cash.
And, no, ME universities are not "desperate" for Western academics and in fact there are very few faculty level positions available. Ninety percent of the teaching jobs in the Gulf are for EFL. And taking a faculty position in the Gulf for longer than, say, "an extended sabbatical" would pretty much mean the end of your career back in the US. So what you tend to get is either people at the end of their careers, expats lifers (I suppose like me), and not a few seriously strange individuals.
The sky-high salaries are largely a myth. I'd say faculty positions in the Gulf pay something like 20-30% over what a US academic might expect to earn (depending on the field). I actually earn more in Japan than I would earn at a Gulf university.
I also wonder what one *does* on a day to day basis. Again, I initally thought that most universities would be posted in exotic bustling cities, but the posts I have read lead me otherwise. Also, your notion of the gulf as a laa-laa land just makes me want to read more.
One of the "learn or leave" lessons for living in the Gulf is how to manage your own leisure time. In the US, your life can easily be filled to overflowing with readily available commercial entertainment. So much so that people never actually realize that THEY are not actually doing anything. I remember when I first when to Kuwait wondering how on earth I would get through all the endless hours. TV broadcasting started at 7pm and lasted until 10pm. My wife and I would actually sit in front of the tube watching the station ID for about 5 minutes before broadcasting began.
But then something interesting happened. I started doing things I would never have done in the US. Time intensive things. When we were looking for a new car, I absolutely filled a journal with clippings and comparison charts and personal impressions. I had all the time in the world to "waste." Then that sort of silly time filler gave way to other more substantial hobbies. I got seriously into photography which after a couple of years grew to such a degree that I was working part-time as a photojournalist, traveling during the breaks in my teaching (about three months a year) to exotic locales (like Rajistan, Southern Yemen, Hanoi, Kamchatka, Tanzania, Guatemala, etc.) to shoot stories for a Mexican National Geographic-like magazine GeoMundo). And doing photography led me into doing my own travel writing. And once I was doing this, I figured, hey, why not write something in my field (EFL) so I knocked out a few journal publications (very few of my Gulf colleagues were doing this). And all of this free time and writing eventually led me to the idea that maybe I wanted to do a Ph.D.
But let's get back to your question of what's a "day in the life" of a Gulf expat -- in particular a teacher. It's a pretty casual life for the most part. You might expect to have about 12-15 hours of class a week -- possibly less. You're usually done by 3pm and often by 1pm. You probably live very close to your work, you may even live on campus. I've lived "on campus" for almost my entire teaching career. Students are generally pleasant but are only rarely genuinely interested in learning (so what's new). Facilties are top-notch. You have a great office and all the computer gear you could ever wish for. Most Gulf universities have invested BIG time in computer labs, workstations, networking, etc. But they never seem to ever have a single computer technician.
Entertainment mostly centers around get togethers with other expats. Endless potlucks with multinational groups. After than it depends on the place. In Oman with it's natural beauty, many expats get into the beach campout or wadi bashing thing. Every weekend you climb in your 4wd and head out to the beach, up into the mountains, or out to the desert. In Kuwait or the UAE where "natural beauty" is more limited shopping tends to occupy a larger portion of one's time.
Some people get into organized activities such as the Hash House Harriers, originally a British tradition which can be summed up by "run 10k through the desert then drink beer." And of course, nowadays, everyone has satelite TV and all the internet they can handle.
We ended up "going in to town" about 4 days a week which at the time involved about a 30 minute drive. There were the totally westernized supermarkets but also the funky local "suqs." And yes there is Pizza Hut, McDonalds, Burger King, Popey's, Hardees, etc. But most of all there are lots and lots of cheap Indian restaurants.
Well, that's about it for now. Time to walk across the sports field to my office. Then I think I'll go fly my RC airplanes.
